In the charming community of Balboa 50 miles from Los Angeles, the middle-class housewife Lucia Harper (Joan Bennett) travels to Los Angeles to meet the scoundrel Ted Darby (Shepperd Strudwick). Her seventeen year-old daughter Beatrice (Geraldine Brooks) is in love with Ted that is a worthless man. He asks for money to leave Bea, but Lucia refuses to give. Bea does not believe on her mother and during the night she sneaks out to the boat garage to meet Ted that admits that Lucia told the truth. Bea pushes him and Ted falls on an anchor immediately dying. On the next morning, Lucia finds the body and assumes that Bea has killed her lover. She decides to get rid of the corpse and puts it in her boat and dumps far from home. When the police find Ted, the stranger Martin Donnelly (James Mason) visits Lucia to blackmail her on behalf of his partner Nagel (Roy Roberts) that has several letters that Bea had written to Ted, asking US$ 5,000 for the letters. The desperate Lucia tries to raise the amount since her husband is working in Berlin. However, Martin falls in love with her and tries to help her. But the dangerous Nagel wants to receive the amount at any price.

"The Reckless Moment" is a suspenseful melodrama of Max Ophüls. The despair of Lucia is impressive trying to protect her family and specially her teenage daughter from the scandal. The plot point is when the criminal falls in love with her and as he says, he had never done a decent deed in his life but he decides to help his beloved victim. Joan Bennett is fantastic in the role of Lucia and James Mason is a nice villain in the end. David Bair plays the annoying son of Lucia that is irritating. In 2001, Tilda Swinton played the lead role in "The Deep End", a good remake of "The Reckless Moment". My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Na Teia do Destino" ("In the Web of the Destiny")

Max Ophüls was an excellent director and the two leads (Joan Bennett and James Mason) were excellent actors. So why then is "The Reckless Moment" such a disappointing film? Well, it's the writing...and if you look there are MANY writers credited for the movie...a sure sign that it is going to disappoint.

When the story begins, Lucy Harper (Bennett) confronts a man at least her age. Why? Because this old lech has been dating Lucy's 17 year-old daughter on the sligh! And, she threatens to go to the police or do SOMETHING unless he stops.

A bit later, the lech secretly visits the daughter and they get into an argument. He falls and is killed...and it's an accident. But the daughter didn't see this and had no idea he was dead. The next day, Lucy goes outside and finds the man's body. Now clearly you can see where he fell through a railing and died...a rather clear case of an accidental death. But she hides the body anyway!!

Later, a 'nice' blackmailer (?!) arrives and announces that Lucy must give him $5000 or he'll give some incriminating letters from the daughter to the dead man to the authorities. Again, her daughter didn't kill him...so WHY would she agree to pay the blackmail...or at least try to?! This doesn't make sense.

What also makes no sense is when the blackmailer soon falls in love with Lucy! By his own admission, he's a career criminal and now he has a conscience?! Well, his partner is NOT pleased and he soon arrives....demanding the $5000 from Lucy. When the 'nice' blackmailer arrives and finds this, he attacks his partner!! Does any of this make sense? No...and what follows REALLY makes no sense....and in fact there were MANY other scenes which made little sense.

The sad thing about this movie is that it has many wonderful scenes and much of it is written well. But too often folks behave in ways that simply defy common sense and a good crime film instead turns into a very disappointing one.

As soon as the opening credits for The Reckless Moment conclude we find Joan Bennett meeting Shepherd Strudwick in Los Angeles some 50 miles from Balboa where she lives giving him an ultimatum to stay away from her daughter Geraldine Brooks. Dad's in the service and stationed in Germany so she has to deal with this unpleasantness. Of course Strudwick laughs in her face.

But later on when Strudwick winds up dead and from what we gather there are no shortage of people who'd like to see him that way, a second stranger shows up played by James Mason who says he has love letters written to Strudwick by Brooks and he and partner Roy Roberts want some big bucks for them. These two are more unpleasant and more unwelcome than Strudwick was.

But Mason has a partial change of heart as he starts picturing Bennett as the kind of girl he should have married and settled down with instead of becoming a disreputable cad.

For the rest you'd better watch The Reckless Moment for. It is the last of four American productions by director Max Ophuls and I would say the least of them.

A good cast of professional players lifts The Reckless Moment into mediocrity. I couldn't buy this story for a minute.